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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   29304 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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There seems to be an idea around many open discussions forums that the left has captured many cultural institutions. This perception seems so persuasive because certain leftist thinkers coined the idea.

While it’s undoubtedly true that many major institutions lean left, it’s also a convenient dodge from the right wing or conservative side in the culture war allowing them to avoid self criticism. In fact it seems that almost any time folks question why right wing values are not more represented in popular culture, the knee-jerk response by conservatives is that the left has captured institutions, so there’s no hope. When the reasonable point is asked as to why this state of affairs can’t be broken by right wing institutions or a similar capture by the right wing, I haven’t seen a good answer.

How has this state of affairs come to be the default? Why did the right lose institutions, and why is there so little discussion about how they can realistically take them back?

You can look into the works of Heterodox Academy, which shows that there indeed is institutional capture of education by the left. The why is an exercise for the reader.

I think the right cant conpete by capturing things of their own is because the right inherently lacks creativity. They are stuck on ye good old days while the future leaves them behind. Is anyone on the right wing even doing anything about/with LLMs? The foremost technology of our times?

the right inherently lacks creativity.

This is incredibly false. The meme economy alone disproves this. Leftist memes are meandering walls of text, or straight up transcriptions from video essays. Right wing memes are much funnier and more concise. Leftist versions of, say, Stonetoss, for example, just aren't anywhere near as good.

Btw, what is the left wing version of Stonetoss anyways?

xkcd and SMBC comics.

I really wouldn't call SMBC left wing. xkcd I agree is left wing, but even he does a lot of tech/nerd stuff rather than political zingers all the time which is Stonetoss's mainstay.

SMBC increases presence women and non-whites relative to real life. What is not left-wing about SMBC?

I agree about latter point: mainly nerd/tech stuff with little politics.

SMBC leans leftwards, but not exclusively. For example, I couldn't see XKCD (or another true left cartoon) make something like determined, that lampooned a leftwing talking point.

See also: heretic (anti-progressive), look-2 (pro-small town), buds (poking fun at LGBT++), pig (anti-sustainability), metrics (anti social science). etc.

EDIT: this one is too perfect to leave out, even if a comic from 2009 is too old to be relevant to the conversation. Radical is pretty perfect too.

It's extremely preoccupied with "REPRESENTATION" and general left leaning things. But I'd grant you its not infected with brainworms level of political toxoplasmosis.

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